The Next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and Assessing a Hierarchical Model with 15 Facets to Enhance Bandwidth, Fidelity, and Predictive Power
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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CORRECTED. SEE LAST PAGE PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES The Next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and Assessing a Hierarchical Model With 15 Facets to Enhance Bandwidth, Fidelity, and Predictive Power Christopher J. Soto Oliver P. John Colby College University of California, Berkeley Three studies were conducted to develop and validate the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2), a major revision of the Big Five Inventory (BFI). Study 1 specified a hierarchical model of personality structure with 15 facet traits nested within the Big Five domains, and developed a preliminary item pool to measure this structure. Study 2 used conceptual and empirical criteria to construct the BFI-2 domain and facet scales from the preliminary item pool. Study 3 used data from 2 validation samples to evaluate the BFI-2’s measurement properties and substantive relations with self-reported and peer-reported criteria. The results of these studies indicate that the BFI-2 is a reliable and valid personality measure, and an important advance over the original BFI. Specifically, the BFI-2 introduces a robust hierarchical structure, controls for individual differences in acquiescent responding, and provides greater bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power than the original BFI, while still retaining the original measure’s concep- tual focus, brevity, and ease of understanding. The BFI-2 therefore offers valuable new opportunities for research examining the structure, assessment, development, and life outcomes of personality traits. Keywords: 5-factor model, Big Five, facets, personality measurement, personality structure Many important individual differences in people’s patterns of Inventory (BFI), which assesses the prototypical features of each thinking, feeling, and behaving can be summarized in terms of the Big Five domain using 44 short and easy-to-understand phrases Big Five personality domains, which we label Extraversion, (John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991; see John & Srivastava, 1999; Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Negative Emotionality (alter- John et al., 2008). The BFI has been used in hundreds of studies to natively labeled Neuroticism vs. Emotional Stability), and Open- date, and has demonstrated considerable reliability, validity, and Mindedness (alternatively labeled Openness to Experience, Intel- utility. However, the 25 years since the BFI’s original develop- lect, or Imagination; Goldberg, 1993b; John, Naumann, & Soto, ment have also yielded important advances in our understanding of 2008; McCrae & Costa, 2008). Over the past quarter century, both personality structure and psychological assessment. Thus, the scientific consensus regarding the structure and basic definitions of present research was conducted to integrate these advances into the the Big Five has generated an explosion of research documenting BFI, while simultaneously addressing a number of substantive and their causes, correlates, and consequences. A considerable portion measurement issues. This research program culminates with the of this research has measured personality traits using the Big Five development and initial validation of the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2). The Big Five Inventory: History and Key Features This article was published Online First April 7, 2016. Christopher J. Soto, Department of Psychology, Colby College; Oliver The original BFI was developed with three key goals in mind. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. P. John, Department of Psychology and Institute of Personality and Social First, it was designed to focus on the prototypical components of This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Research, University of California, Berkeley. each Big Five domain. This focus was achieved through a com- This research was supported by faculty research grants from Colby bined rational-empirical approach to scale construction. Specifi- College to Christopher J. Soto, and from the University of California, cally, a panel of expert judges reviewed the 300 items of the Berkeley to Oliver P. John. For a downloadable version of the BFI-2 and Adjective Check List (ACL; Gough & Heilbrun, 1983) and iden- more information, visit the Colby Personality Lab website (http://www tified those that were conceptually relevant to one of the Big Five. .colby.edu/psych/personality-lab/). To initiate a translation, short form, or Analyses of observer-reports were then conducted to test and other adaptation of the BFI-2, please contact the authors. The authors thank Juliana Pham for her assistance with this research, and Wiebke Bleidorn for refine the selected adjectives’ Big Five structure. This two-stage her helpful comments on a draft of this article. process yielded a set of approximately 100 trait-descriptive adjec- Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christo- tives that were conceptually and empirically central to the Big pher J. Soto, Department of Psychology, Colby College, 5550 Mayflower Five, and these adjectives provided a lexical foundation from Hill, Waterville, ME 04901. E-mail: [email protected] which to develop the BFI (John, 1989, 1990). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2017, Vol. 113, No. 1, 117–143 © 2016 American Psychological Association 0022-3514/17/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096 117 118 SOTO AND JOHN A second key goal for the BFI was clarity. Because trait- within their Abridged Big Five Circumplex (AB5C) model. Sauc- descriptive adjectives are understood and rated more consistently ier and Ostendorf (1999) empirically examined the hierarchical when they are accompanied by elaborations or definitions (Gold- structure of trait-descriptive adjectives in English and German, and berg & Kilkowski, 1985), the prototypical Big Five adjectives identified 18 facet-level subcomponents (3 or 4 within each do- identified by John (1989, 1990) were elaborated into short phrases main) that replicated between the two languages. Each of these for the BFI. Specifically, most BFI items are structured in one of early projects identified a somewhat different set of Big Five three ways: (a) adjective, synonym (e.g., “Is outgoing, sociable”), facets, but more recent work has begun to integrate their results. (b) adjective, definition (e.g., “Is relaxed, handles stress well”), or For example, one influential project (DeYoung, Quilty, & Peter- (c) adjective in context (e.g., “Is a reliable worker”). These short son, 2007) used factor analysis to derive two major and maximally phrases retain the simplicity and brevity of adjectival items, while independent “aspects” of each Big Five domain that represent addressing the limitation that individual adjectives often have commonalities among the 75 total facets proposed by Costa and ambiguous or multiple meanings. McCrae (1995) and Hofstee et al. (1992). Similarly, a broad review A final key goal was efficiency. Each BFI scale is long enough of the Big Five literature (John et al., 2008) highlighted overlaps to be reliable and provide reasonably broad coverage of its Big between the facets conceptually defined by Costa and McCrae Five domain, but still short enough to conserve research time and (1995), the lexical subcomponents empirically identified by Sauc- prevent respondent fatigue. At 44 total items, the BFI can be ier and Ostendorf (1999), and the AB5C facets best represented on completed in 5 to 10 min. At the time of its development, the BFI the classic California Psychological Inventory (Gough, 1957; see was considerably shorter than most available broadband personal- Soto & John, 2009b). These integrative papers suggest that, within ity inventories, which typically included hundreds of items. each Big Five domain, a large amount of more-specific personality We sought to retain these three key strengths—focus, clarity, information can be captured by two to four facet traits that con- and brevity—while developing the BFI-2. Specifically, we wanted sistently replicate across alternative hierarchical models. the BFI-2 to capture the prototypical features of each Big Five The original BFI was developed before all of these projects, and domain, to use easy-to-understand phrases, and to be short enough was therefore not intended as a hierarchical measure. However, it for research participants to complete in 10 min or less. However, is now clear that facet-level traits capture meaningful personality we also aimed to address some limitations of the original BFI by information, that many facets show distinctive developmental integrating important advances from research on personality struc- trends, and that individual facets relate uniquely with important ture and psychological assessment. behaviors and life outcomes (e.g., Ashton et al., 1995; Costa & McCrae, 1995; Hirsh, DeYoung, Xiaowen Xu, & Peterson, 2010; Personality Structure and Assessment: Bandwidth, Paunonen & Ashton, 2001; Soto, John, Gosling, & Potter, 2011; Fidelity, and Hierarchy Terracciano, McCrae, Brant, & Costa, 2005). In a previous project, we therefore developed post hoc facet scales for the original BFI Personality traits can be defined with different degrees of con- (Soto & John, 2009a). These post hoc facet scales have proven ceptual breadth. A broadly defined trait (e.g., Conscientiousness) useful in a number of studies (e.g., Markowitz, Goldberg, Ashton, has the advantage of high bandwidth: it efficiently summarizes a & Lee,